NASA’s 1st Flight To Moon, Apollo 8, Marks 50th anniversary

To this day, the 1968 mission of Apollo 8 is considered to be NASA’s boldest and perhaps most dangerous undertaking. That first voyage by humans to another world set the stage for the still grander Apollo 11 moon landing seven months later. The mission was whipped together in just four months in order to reach the moon by year’s end, before the Soviet Union.

There was the Old Testament reading by commander Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders. Lastly, there was the photo named “Earthrise,” showing our blue and white ball rising above the bleak, gray lunar landscape and 240,000 miles in the distance.

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Apollo 8 is considered NASA’s boldest undertaking ever. As it marks its 50th anniversary this Christmas, space experts and one of the astronauts tell the story of the Earthrise photo, which remains the most iconic space snapshot. (Dec 18)

To Lovell, the journey had the thrill and romance of true exploration and provided an uplifting cap for Americans to a painful, contentious year marked by the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, nationwide riots and protests of the Vietnam War.

The mission’s impact was perhaps best summed up in a four-word telegram received by Borman. “Thanks, you saved 1968.”

As that first moon shot neared, Borman’s wife, Susan, demanded to know the crew’s chances. A NASA director answered: 50-50. Borman wanted to get to the moon and get back fast. In his mind, a single lap around the moon would suffice. His bosses insisted on more.

“My main concern in this whole flight was to get there ahead of the Russians and get home. That was a significant achievement in my eyes,” Borman explained at the Chicago launch of the book “Rocket Men” last spring.

On Christmas Eve, the spaceship successfully slipped into orbit around the moon. Before bedtime, the first envoys to another world took turns reading the first 10 verses from Genesis. It had been left to Borman, before the flight, to find “something appropriate” to say for what was expected to be the biggest broadcast audience to date.

“We all tried for quite a while to figure out something, and it all came up trite or foolish,” Borman recalled. Finally, the wife of a friend of a friend came up with the idea of Genesis.

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“In the beginning,” Anders read, “God created the heaven and the Earth ...”

On Christmas morning, their spacecraft went around the moon for the final time. The engine firing needed to shoot them back to Earth occurred while the capsule was out of communication with Mission Control in Houston. Lovell broke the nervous silence as the ship reappeared: “Please be informed there is a Santa Claus.”

Anders snapped the iconic Earthrise photo during the crew’s fourth orbit of the moon, frantically switching from black-and-white to color film to capture the planet’s exquisite, fragile beauty.

“We came to explore the moon and what we discovered was the Earth,” Anders is fond of saying.

(All pictures from the Associated Press)

Lovell remains awestruck by the fact he could hide all of Earth behind his thumb.

“Over 3 billion people, mountains, oceans, deserts, everything I ever knew was behind my thumb,” he recalled at a recent anniversary celebration at Washington’s National Cathedral.

By July 1969, Apollo 8 was overshadowed by Apollo 11′s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin moon landing. But without Apollo 8, noted George Washington’s Logsdon, NASA likely would not have met President John F. Kennedy’s deadline of putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Borman and Anders never flew in space again, and Soviet cosmonauts never made it to the moon.